The armed wing of the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) announced on Aug. 26 that five of its members had been “martyred while performing their combat duty in the West Bank.”
One of the gunmen, Yazan Daraghmeh, a commander of
the Tubas Battalion militia, was killed in a “work accident” while
planting an explosive device that was supposed to be used against Israel
Defense Forces soldiers in his hometown of Tubas in the northern West
Bank. The four other gunmen, Oday Abu Naasa, Ahmed al-Anteer, Taher Raddad and Mosab al-Muqasqas, were killed in
recent clashes with the IDF. They belonged to similar armed groups in
the cities of Jenin and Tulkarem, also located in the northern West
Bank.
Armed and funded by Iran, the
“battalions,” whose members are affiliated with PIJ, Hamas and the
ruling Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas, began operating in the northern West Bank more than three years
ago.
Since then, gunmen belonging to these groups have carried out countless attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Recently, the gunmen started using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against Israeli
civilian and military vehicles. It is worth noting that some of these
militias are based only a few hundred meters away from Israeli
communities, both in the West Bank and inside Israel.
In May, Hamas terrorists in Tulkarem recorded themselves shooting toward Bat Hefer, an Israeli town near the border of the West Bank.
“Iran-supported Islamist militias are currently engaged in war against Israel on two fronts,” wrote British-Israeli analyst and journalist Jonathan Spyer, an expert on radical Islamic groups.
“The main focus of combat remains, of course, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
“A ‘support front,’ as is the preferred
term, has been maintained by Lebanese Hezbollah since October 8 in the
Israel-Lebanon border area.
“Iran seeks as a strategic objective to
surround Israel with a crescent of active fronts maintained by Iran and
supported by Islamist client militias. As part of this, the [Iranian]
regime is seeking to find a way to add an eastern component to this
crescent—through Jordan to the West Bank….
“Tehran has succeeded in establishing and
maintaining an arms route in which military materiel, brought from Iran
into Lebanon, is then transported across the Syrian-Lebanese border, via
Jordan, into the West Bank.
“The maintenance of this route is of
strategic importance to Iran. It is intended, over time, to flood the
West Bank with weaponry, and by so doing, to eventually make this area a
third front in the ongoing long war against Israel.”
Many gunmen are said to have joined the
“battalions” in the West Bank, especially in areas controlled by
Mahmoud Abbas’s P.A. The P.A. security forces, however, haven’t really
done anything to disband or disarm the militias. This is the same P.A.
that, since its establishment 30 years ago, did nothing except watch
while Hamas expanded throughout the Gaza Strip, eventually taking
control over the entire coastal enclave in 2007.
The P.A.’s failure to crack down on the
“battalions” means that Iran now has a small army in the West Bank. It
will not be long before members of this army attack Israel in the same
way as the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, in which 1,200
Israelis were murdered, with many raped, tortured and burned alive. In
addition, more than 240 Israelis, including babies, women and the
elderly, were abducted to the Gaza Strip, where 107 of them are still
being held as hostages.
Those who persist in advocating for the
establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel must take into
consideration that doing so would lead to the rise of more Iran-backed
“battalions” in the West Bank and other areas over which the P.A. is
given control. Since the gunmen are frequently praised as “heroes” by many Palestinians, neither Abbas nor anyone who replaces him would have the courage to take them on.
Instead of ordering his security forces to
crack down on the “battalions,” Abbas appears to have other priorities.
He is evidently planning to return to the Gaza Strip. In a recent
speech before Turkey’s Parliament, Abbas declared:
“I have decided to head with all members
of the Palestinian leadership to the Gaza Strip, and I will work with
all my energy to be with our people, as our lives are not more precious
than the life of any Palestinian child.”
On Aug. 25, a committee set up by Abbas to prepare for the return of the P.A. to the Gaza Strip decided to
“contact the political bureau of Hamas and other Palestinian factions
in order to agree and reach an understanding with them” on Abbas’s plans
to head to the coastal enclave. Abbas, it seems, believes that he can
reach an advantageous deal with Hamas, whose members staged a bloody
coup against his P.A. in 2007 and were preparing to assassinate him.
The P.A. will never be able to assume
control of the Gaza Strip as long as Hamas’s military capabilities have
not been destroyed. Even if Abbas does go back to the Gaza Strip, it is
not probable that he would be able to confront Hamas and other
Palestinian armed groups there. As in the West Bank, new “battalions”
and militias will no doubt spring up in the Gaza Strip under Abbas’s
P.A. to pursue the jihad (holy war) to eliminate Israel and replace it
with an Islamist state.
Under the current circumstances, handing
the Gaza Strip over to the P.A. would not only be seen as a big reward
to Iran and its terror proxies but most likely lead to a major war.
Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
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